


for i will forsake you

by corvidbones



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Hanahaki Disease, Illness, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, listen they're... trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23695297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidbones/pseuds/corvidbones
Summary: Jon returns to the Archives with flowers nestled inside of his lungs, and Tim can't keep himself from getting involved.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims (mentioned)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 201





	for i will forsake you

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Taking months to finish editing something I wrote in one night...? Perhaps. Maybe. Yes.  
> I played a bit fast and loose with the rules of hanahaki for this one, which was very fun.
> 
> See end of notes for extra warnings and flower meanings.
> 
> Title is from the song Sloom by Of Monsters and Men.

Tim notices, not that it's any major feat to do so. Catches the abrupt coughs half-hidden into the crook of Jon's arm, his hand.

Notices the small purple flowers that slip between his fingers only to be crushed, gracelessly, under foot. Notices the frequent panic flashing in Jon's eyes, his hand raising itself to his chest in a blind search for relief, before he excuses himself from whatever conversation he's in the middle of to go and hack petals into his office's waste bin.

If he thinks he's being sneaky and subtle about it, he's just as big of an idiot as Tim's been driven to think.

It hasn't escaped the notice of Martin, Basira, or even Melanie either— while they don't make mention of it, Tim knows that the conclusion they've arrived at is the same as his own. He can see the crease between Martin's eyebrows deepen as a muffled cough is heard from somewhere amid the Archives' shelving, the _look_ in his eyes that's gotten worse and worse, lately. He's desperate to confess to Jon, tell him that he loves him. Lay his feelings out once and for all, if only because he's been forced to by the looming threat of Jon's… curse? Condition? Really, _really_ fucking inconvenient floral growth?

No matter the reason, Martin's still afraid. Because what if he's not the one Jon's lungs are tending a garden for?

Tim would have poked fun at him for that, once. _The both of you, I swear, oblivious to hell and back again_.

But he's beginning to wonder, now, if Martin's reluctance might not be wrong.

Jon's coughing is growing more severe, and his eyes are tired and hollow when he emerges from his office to search for a missing statement, or to fetch a drink from the cramped basement kitchen. It isn't uncommon for him to find Tim there, silent and sitting at the table, doing his best to slack off. Most of the time Tim ignores him, and Jon leaves before either party can even utter a _hello._ Other times Tim will look up as Jon hovers over the counter, stirring an oversteeped cup of tea, and he'll meet his gaze for the half second before Jon twists his head away, quick enough that it must hurt.

Not quick enough to disguise that he's been staring at Tim quite a lot, recently. Tim would have to be blind not to notice. Which he isn't, so.

He confronts Jon in his office. Interrupts him at the tail end of a statement, right before he comes out of that fugue of flowing words and fear that leaves him so hazy and nauseous, after. Like eating too much of something pleasant, something _good_ , until the taste of your own stomach acid turns each bite rancid and heavy.

Maybe it's wrong to corner Jon while he's vulnerable. Frankly, Tim doesn't give a shit.

On a whim, a stupid, foolish whim, he brings in twin cups of tea. Black, a dash of milk in Jon's.

He sets them down on the desk as Jon starts to cough and _cough_ like he's going to vomit, until there are tears pricking at his eyes, until a white, spit-shiny flower pushes itself from his mouth and into his palm. A smattering of purple petals cling to his lips, his teeth, and he sits there _panting_ while Tim just watches, and waits, as Jon crushes the flower in his hand like he can still hide it.

But even Tim can recognize an oleander.

"Would you just… just _try_ and tell me the truth for once, Jon," he says, and his voice comes out much leveler than he'd thought he could manage. "Do you seriously resent Martin so much that you're growing poison for him?"

The flower is tossed into the waste bin, beside several others. Sodden and cold and joined by blood-spotted tissues. Tim sips his too-hot tea, ignores the burn, the itch it leaves behind in his throat. He wishes he'd made coffee instead.

Jon won't look at him. Doesn't reach for the tea plainly within his grasp, as if it's going to leap out at him, and there's not a sound in the room until he heaves a shallow, congested sigh.

"Not for Martin," he says, and sounds ashamed. Finally, for a fleeting second, he meets Tim's eyes.

Tim's fingers shake, and he _knows_.

His tea returns to its untouched partner on the desk, and he gets to his feet, winding his way around the desk. There's a tape recorder sitting on the cluttered surface (and when isn't there, these days), but for once the thing is dead quiet.

"I'm sorry," Jon says, and he sounds damn near close to crying, voice all wobbly and faint. So unlike how it used to be, steady and firm, before all this shit. He rises from his chair with a nervous sort of hesitance. "I don't know why it— I don't _know_ , I—"

Tim leans forward and kisses him before he can say anything more.

It's one of the most senseless things he's ever done, but he already knows it won't matter.

Jon is still, and cold, and Tim might as well be kissing a mannequin. He laps at a petal stuck on Jon's lips, thinks he ends up swallowing it. And then Jon seems to slump against him, a little; starts to kiss back.

It's slow, tired and sloppy. Tim responds by kissing harder, and Jon begins matching him until Tim's tongue meets the barrier of his teeth. Then he's pulling back, an unhappy grunt escaping him, and Tim lets him go.

Jon coughs into his palm, a spray of purple, and that is answer enough.

Tim doesn't know what to say. He's praying that Jon doesn't look at him. Just grabs a tissue from the dwindling box tucked out of sight behind the desk and reaches for Jon's hands, pretends not to feel him flinch, pretends not to feel _anything_ as he wipes the fresh blood and petals from Jon's skin. Tosses it into the bin with the rest, and pretends that he doesn't linger a moment before letting go.

"I don't blame you for this," Tim says, carefully. "But I can't— I can't fix it. Not for you."

"I never said you could," Jon replies, a touch disgruntled, as if Tim hadn't been all over his mouth a minute ago. "They might not even be for _you_ at all."

"Yeah," Tim says, almost scoffs. "Might not."

He leaves, then, the two cups of tea chilled and forgotten, and ignores Jon's ragged coughing as the office door closes behind him.

The thing is, Tim knows that Jon won't die from this, unrequited love or no.

It's not because he thinks the Beholding won't let him, not quite. He's sure that the clustering flowers and leaves and roots could choke Jon just fine, given the time and patience. But they're not going to get that.

There are stories of people killing their unrequited's for the sake of getting the flowers to _stop—_ far and few between, but it's happened. Because once the sufferer's object of affection is dead, the flowers die along with them, withering and disappearing from the lungs. Clearing up like phlegm from a bad chest cold, and not an inexplicable affliction of body and soul.

Jon gets worse, his voice rough and thin when he speaks. Martin brings him tea filled to the brim with honey and mint and Tim might think it _sweet_ if Jon wasn't so blatantly hopeless. In all honesty, it's probably nothing short of a miracle that Martin isn't the one suffering from the disease.

Tim has considered it, though. The possibility that Martin's feelings aren't unrequited at all.

Jon is still drowning in flowers, yes, but you can always love more than a single person at once.

And when Tim finally manages to get himself killed, _who is he even kidding_ , those flowers will go with him.

He's sure of it, now.

The next time he kisses Jon, he spends most of it trying not to enjoy the way Jon's lungs greedily take in the air spilling past Tim's lips, open and clear and easy. Tries to ignore the growing itch low in his throat, as his teeth are flecked with bits of hyacinth and Jon shivers at his touch.

It's a mere week before the Unknowing when wet, velvet-soft petals of red and black first spill from Tim's mouth. They don't even come as a surprise, really, in spite of everything.

He knows they're for Jon, and he knows it doesn't matter.

He knows it doesn't matter as they sit in their hotel room together, Tim rubbing circles into Jon's chest, over his shirt, as Jon coughs until tears flow down his face. Until he's sitting there on the ugly bedspread, surrounded by bloodied tissues coated in flowers, and he's apologizing, sick and exhausted and so, so afraid. Tim won't tell him it's okay, that he's forgiven, because he _can't_. But at some point tears have started down his face, too, hot and angry. And sitting there with Jon against him, wheezing for air, he stifles his own burgeoning cough that he's been drowning all night in whiskey, and kisses him.

He kisses him until Jon's breathing slows, keeps rubbing his chest, warming it beneath the firm press of his hand. Jon's mouth tastes like iron, already wet with saliva and blood by the time that Tim meets him.

It is so much gentler than anything Tim feels.

It is not something he gets to have.

When he pulls back, the rustling leaves in Jon's lungs momentarily calmed, he coughs into his own fist until petals press against the roof of his mouth. The flower is a delicate, pink-tinged white when it falls into his palm.

Jon's expression is the barest hint of alarmed. Like he'd been expecting this, like he'd known.

Fuck, he probably _had_.

Tim's face offers nothing but mild displeasure as he crushes the oleander under his fingertips. Takes another drink of whiskey after grabbing the bottle from the nightstand, then passes it to Jon, who clutches the neck in his grip like he's trying to shatter it.

"Stop worrying," Tim says, as if the world isn't ending tomorrow. As if he and Jon aren't both choking on flowers that are growing more out of mutual anguish than anything else. "Come on, Jon."

That dredges him from his thoughts, and Jon raises the whiskey for a hearty swig of what's left before handing it back. There are petals stuck to the rim, stark in the dim glow of the lamp, and Tim drinks those down too.

He lays down with Jon, once they've got all the lights turned off. Kisses the corner of his mouth for good measure, and while he doesn't try and hold him he doesn't protest, either, when Jon's head tucks against his shoulder, and they can hear each other breathing. However weak and rasping it may be.

Neither of them sleep very well at all.

Tim dies, and he doesn't forgive Jon for anything.

But there are flowers crawling up his throat as he presses the detonator, white and red and black, dripping with fury and something not too far off from love.

Jon falls into limbo like hail into a turbulent lake.

He's a dying animal lying motionless in a creek bed, swayed only by the flow of water where it fell. Cold and still as a corpse, but holding onto some trembling thread of life all the same, even as breathing becomes nothing more than a faraway concept.

It's incredibly lucky that he wasn't blinded in the explosion, says a nurse to Basira and then to Martin, and it's one of the only things they are ever told. Neither of them see any doctors, and Jon seems to be largely ignored by the staff as they go about their daily rounds. Left to his own comatose devices. The stillness of his chest is the strangest thing to look at, Martin thinks. So strange, yet nearly peaceful (and he kicks himself for that thought), after months of watching him cough himself sick.

Jon is held aloft by his patron, far out of Martin's reach, but he does not die. And upon Martin's last visit to his bedside, he spies something poking from the corner of Jon's mouth.

He knows that he shouldn't, and he knows that he has to, when he grabs the bone-white tendril and _pulls_ until stems and roots and brittle, dead leaves are spilling over Jon's blanketed chest.

"It was Tim," he says, to absolutely no one, and somehow the realization doesn't come as a surprise to him. "Christ, Jon, I... I'm sorry."

It would feel wrong, to sweep the remains of Jon's flowers into the waste bin. He can't even bring himself to entertain the idea. Instead, he begins collecting as many near translucent stems and shriveled petals as he can, tucking them into his bag.

Tim's body had been cremated, as he'd left in his will. Didn't want to leave anything behind for the entities to touch, he'd said, and Martin thinks that's a perfectly sensible request to have made.

Means for no grave to bury the flowers at, though.

So he burns them, and resolutely doesn't cry.

But it feels like an end.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for:  
> \- Hanahaki-typical body horror  
> \- A lot of coughing, descriptions of blood  
> \- Tim's death during the Unknowing + suicidal ideation
> 
> Purple hyacinth: I am sorry; please forgive me; sorrow — Jon  
> Petunia (johnny flame variation): resentment; anger; soothing presence — Tim  
> Oleander: caution; beware — both
> 
> Comments and kudos are adored.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @corvidbones.


End file.
